Physicists invented a language in order to talk about the world. This book does not set out to explain the discipline, but rather to explore the relationship between the language of physics and the world it describes. The ``physics'' whose history the author traces here is concerned with understanding the ultimate constituents of matter and the nature of the forces through which these constituents interact. The very precise language (mathematics) of physicists gives us an opportunity to see more clearly than is otherwise possible just how much of what we find in the world is a result of the way we talk about it. Anyone interested in the history of physics and its language would enjoy reading this book.